- Two things happened. I was faster and it cost me less. I was faster because when
Opus one or Château Lafitte or Dom Perignon's new vintage came out, I would email it the day it came in and I would get the sale. A month later, those individuals would get the catalog from my competitors saying
the Dom Perignon's here. So I was winning on speed but also cost. And then finally, the tipping
point was Google AdWords. I was smart enough to realize
Google was a big platform, they launched the AdWords product and literally on the day they
launched the AdWords product, I started buying wine terms. At first wine, Bordeaux, Mirlo, Champagne, later I had to pick, you
know, have to get smarter, because people started figuring it out. But I had about a year there
where I was paying 5 cents and then it became 10 cents per every wine term you can imagine and acquiring customers for nothing. Sometimes 20, 30 cents to get customers, active customers, which is insane. So that became, about a couple years ago, I realized what I'd been talking about was underpriced attention. Meaning, the reason I'm so
passionate about LinkedIn now, but didn't say a word
about it 6 years ago, is the organic reach on a LinkedIn post for a business right now is meaningful. Because LinkedIn has so
much attention on it, yet not as much content and ads on it yet. Because this is what always happens. You're able to get some
organic reach when you post. To me that is the holy grail of marketing, when you're getting people to know about your business or you and it costs you less aka
either 0 on organic reach, or why Facebook became so
big when you can spend $50 and get people to see it. (upbeat music) You got your perspective. (upbeat music) (audience applauds) Don't you want to be happy, don't you wanna be happy? (upbeat music) - Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us this afternoon. We're delighted to be
hosting Gary Vaynerchuk for the next hour. We will be having Q&A at the end, so please make sure you get your questions in the right hand corner
so we can get to them. So this guy needs no introduction. Gary is the chairman of VaynerX, the active CEO of
VaynerMedia, CEO VaynerSports, serial entrepreneur and
prolific angel investor and five times New York Best Seller. So welcome, Gary. - Thank you so much, Emma, how're you? - I'm good, How're you keeping? - I'm keeping, it's been, I think all of us will very much struggle to ever forget 2020. And I'm really excited to be here, I just want to say hello to
everybody on the LinkedIn side, a platform I'm extremely fond of and I've had the luxury
of doing events in America and other parts and big
special shout out to Niall, who worked with me at Vayner
for many, many, many years, who I know is having a
fantastic career on LinkedIn. And I've not been doing
a whole lot of these because I've been really
in operations mode. But when he asked, I
knew I had to say yes. So I'm really glad to be here with you. - Oh, that's great. Thanks so much and I know we've loads
of LinkedIn attendees who are so excited to get your insight and perspective on the industry. So I'll asked we dive
in with some questions. But the first thing I have to ask you and your LinkedIn style and it wouldn't be a
LinkedIn event without it is, can you tell us what's not
on your LinkedIn profile? - What's not on my LinkedIn. So when you're a prolific entrepreneur, you end up forgetting some
other things you're even doing. So I've had, for example, what's not on my LinkedIn profile. In the last 36 months, I've had 2 companies that
I've co-founded or founded. Empathy Wines, which was a
direct to consumer wine brand and Resy, which was a restaurant app POS
system for the restaurants and on the consumer side, demand side, have substantial exits Resy sold for hefty 9 figures to Amex and Empathy. I just sold about a month and a half ago to Constellation Brands, the biggest wine company in the world, for almost $100 million exit. And neither of those 2
substantial business wins are on my LinkedIn profile. So I would say probably, you know, a lot of times when people see me, they think of me as a
motivational speaker, as a content creator. And a lot of times if I'm
being very transparent, a part of me is upset by that because I have so much
pride in the fact that, between building my dad's business, building Vayner, Resy,
Empathy, my angel investments, I have a substantial actual career that's overshadowed by my
prolific content creation. And sometimes that's
my own fault and doing because you're I have
these big business wins and I'm not even listing
them on my LinkedIn account. So as soon as I'm hanging up here, I'm gonna get to work and
make sure it gets updated. - You should, you should,
they're amazing achievements. And you talk about that,
your personal brand. I mean, There's no doubt it. You've been a pioneer in the practice of building a personal brand. How do you feel it's contributed
to your to your success? - When you put yourself
out there as a human being, there's no question to me that there's an incredible amount of benefits. I started an agency, an
advertising agency 11 years ago, really 9 years ago, because the first 2 years
I was quite passive, my younger brother really held it down, because I was still
running my dad's business. And it was actually, what really threw me off
was I wrote my first book, Crush It. And that became a New York
Times best seller and a big one. And that kind of got
me, pulled into speaking and other things, and I wanted
to take advantage of that. So, but I started this business coming from being a wine
merchant in New Jersey. So, it was really my personal
brand, the book, the speeches, the content that even gave us a chance to have those first
conversations with the Pepsi, with the Campbells, with the GE. And it was built on that
back, because otherwise, there was no knowledge,
there was no rationale for the biggest companies in the world to take a meeting with us,
started by a wine merchant and a kid that came out of college. So it's contributed in the start
of Vayner, for Sure, Media. It's contributed in the fact that Mark Zuckerberg allowed me
to invest in his company, because of my personal brand,
not because of anything else. I was just, again, a wine merchant, and now Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr, David Karp playing cook at Twitter. These humans were interested in me because of the content I was
putting out on the internet. And it became the gateway, the ticket to let me into
different places in my life. So, it's been a huge door opener. When you put out content to the world, what happens next is
people reach out to you. So, whether it's Dwayne The Rock Johnson or whether it's Johnson and Johnson, I have had people reach out to me instead of me having to reach out to them because I've created brand and that's been incredibly
powerful to my career. The The downside is you have to live and die by your personality. So I am a scrappy immigrant kid that grew up in middle class New Jersey. And so that has meant that
my content has cursing in it, which, you know, So I've just
told you some nice things, I know for a fact that
we were on the verge of getting a multi million dollar contract from a fortune 50 company and a board member saw
LinkedIn, actually this is funny to tell you guys, saw a LinkedIn video, where I was crass in my language, not in what I was talking about and literally sent an email to the CEO, which the CEO then sent an
email to the division leader that basically eliminated our agency from being able to do the work because she was unhappy with that. And I'm competitive and I'm
an over the top personality. So there's definitely been
some losses along the way. But you kind of live
your life in knowing that there's some pluses and minuses to it. When you put yourself out there, you've allowed people
to make judgment of you. And though 98% of the comments on every LinkedIn posts that I put out, are incredibly positive, there's no question that there's 2% of, well, "This guy's a charlatan, he actually doesn't know
anything, da, da, da, da, da, da" And when you're a human being, no matter how thick your skin is, no matter how much success you have, it never feels nice to have somebody call you names or degrade you. And so it's a process
that is not for everyone. But I do believe that net has more positive than negative impacts. - Yeah, that's really
interesting I mean... - The reason that's it's interesting and I appreciate kind of the
way that processed for you and I hope for the people
that are watching is it's the reason most
people don't do it, Emma. The reason most people
don't put out content, like to me again, you know
what's fun about living my life? I put out all my content all the time. So I think everybody
here knows that I'm not pandering to the LinkedIn
audience right now. I have been an incredibly big advocate about LinkedIn content
for the last 5 years. It's a game changer for
people's professional careers. LinkedIn's organic reach is remarkable, best in the world along with TikTok, meaning anybody here, Gavin, you, Jennifer Shaw Sweet, Christopher Glen, anybody here tomorrow can
make their first video on their LinkedIn account
about something maybe different and start the process of having
more people know about them. But the reason most people don't is they can't deal with
the negative pushback. And that is unfortunate. And that's why I've spent a
lot of time with my content, talking about self esteem
and self worth and self love and patience and all the things
that are needed and required to actually have a chance to be successful at content creation. It's much more of a mental
game than it is a creative. What do I post? Can I deal with the
ramifications of posting? - All right, yeah. you talk about how you're
using LinkedIn now, like how have you seen
LinkedIn evolve as a platform, and how are you using it now versus say, a couple of years ago, and potentially, how
are your teams using it as well for business development? - I would argue, and I give Facebook an incredible amount of credit for their evolution
over the last 15 years, but I would still say that out of all the platforms in the world, the one that has gone through the most significant
transformation is LinkedIn. Here's why. It started off slowly as a utility. There was no part of LinkedIn 7 years ago that made people think
content creation, social, I mean people refer to
LinkedIn as a social network, now, in certain pockets of the industry. So 6 years ago, I could go an entire year
without going to my LinkedIn, because I was an entrepreneur,
I wasn't looking for jobs. And the end, pretty much. Now, I would argue that when
I have a business objective, it's the first place I think about. And so it's also evolved into VaynerMedia, we produce an enormous amount of broad content with other CMOs,
not even our own clients. We do, we're doing something called Marketing For the Now Right Now, which is a 2 hour free
seminar once every 10 days, where we interview a bunch
of the thought leaders in the business world. And I would argue that 50%
of the reason we do it is just to give us post production creative for our VaynerMedia, LinkedIn, because that brings awareness from other marketers about our agency. And so it has become a massive force, and is also a big part of our playbook as an agency provider. We we have become very aggressive
going after B2B clients, because we think instead
of doing print ads in the B2B magazine, or buying million dollar
booths at conferences, that LinkedIn content strategy is the single best strategy
for every B2B marketer. And now, even scarier, last night I was talking
to a food CPG company. And during the meeting, I said, "Look, I think LinkedIn is something you need to think about, I think LinkedIn is acting
like Facebook did 7 years ago. And I know how you're thinking about it, senior marketer who's not in the trenches, but I would tell you that if you put out recipe content
on LinkedIn right now, it will do extremely well. And you should be looking at
this platform a different way." And so I think people are
starting to kind of "Get it" that there's something
really going on here. - You talk like this marketing for a now initiative that you're running. How do you see like, with everything that's happened
this year and a pandemic, How do you see recovery
taking shape for marketeers? How do you see them coming out of this? What's your perspective on this? - My perspective is
that the global economy is in much worse shape than
anyone's really talking about, because everyone's printed money. We've got a lot of conflict, you've got nuances of nationalism sprinting everywhere around the world led by America and China. And I think I would
argue that, first of all, I have no clue because
we're not out of it, right? What's really difficult
about that question, when I'm asked it is, look, first, geopolitical and global economic
variables have to play out and that's a little
bit above my pay grade. I haven't done that homework. But what I can tell you is, it's very clear to me that
the common sense fundamentals are in a very vulnerable spot and you have a major election in the US and you have some pretty aggressive things going around the world. You have conflict in my former
birthplace of Belarus where they're trying to overthrow a dictator. You've got real "stuff" going on. And so I think that I think
that people are a little naive, in thinking, well, I think the world has had a very good run, if you think about it economically, outside of the recession,
the global recession of 2008. The reality is that the world has had a fairly good run economically
over the last 40 years. And I think that that
has made us very soft and very naive to what could happen. Now, I'm not predicting doomsday or depressions or great recessions. But I will say that we are so far away from understanding recovery, because recovery is a fascinating thing. This is not like a war or a recession, where you've already
understood the dynamics. One could argue that you will never see human
beings again at an airport, not wearing a mask. Let's just say that's true, Emma. If that's true, just on that, just on "everything went back to normal," except whenever humans
travel, they were a mask. Just that heavily impacts
a lot of businesses, Bravo, food and beverage
businesses that rely on the ecosystems of global airports, there's just a, duty free shops, like, there's just that little and by the way, all of us know
that, that's not the case. There'll be many, many
more ramifications of this. And so not to mention something that I don't think people remember about. In America, I talk to a
lot of executives about remember 911, it was devastating. And then for the next 5 years, anytime anything happened with a plane or this, you were gun shy. I mean, I expect every human
being for the next 5 years to overreact to another human being sneezing in any situation. What does that mean? Just think about that, does that mean that events and restaurants have a 3% decline? Let's just say 3%, Emma. Restaurants work on such low margin that if they just lose
3-5% of their business because the most extreme of
us are scared post Corona and really kind of just don't leave the house anymore period. Or far less often, if you were somebody who went
out to eat 20 times a year, you're down to 3. If that's the case, for some businesses they can't
recover with that 5% loss, that was all their profit. And so I think the
ramifications are substantial. On the flip side, there's a lot of businesses
that will explode. Every direct to consumer business, on the internet is going to
grow with that transition. So I think there's still a lot unknown. As a matter of fact this
morning back to the UK market, this morning, I woke up to
Boris Johnson saying that they're gonna take the groups, that gatherings down from 30 to 6. That's a step backwards
to recovery, right? That doesn't mean, and I think that this is gonna
go on for a little while, and I don't think people really, I don't think most people realize that it's going to be next summer, if everything goes remarkably well, to where you kind of might
start seeing the first toe in the water back to normalcy. That's a long time. I remember when this all happened. I thought, oh my God! We're gonna close the offices
for 2 weeks, that's crazy. It's gonna end up being closer
to 2 years than 2 weeks. So I think that, I think
it's unprecedented times and I think it's way early
to figure out what happens. But what I can tell you is for me and this is just, I would call this luck. For me, the fact that
everything in my mind has been about video streaming, and
the cell phone and you know, lack of friction, internet only. The real world is
secondary, nice important, but it's secondary to this world. That has put me in a
position as a communicator and as a business
operator in a better spot than some businesses because
I bet on the internet and the internet is the
real winner of this reality. I would very likely be doing
this in person with you, Emma, the next time I was in the region. Now, I'll be able to do 3 times with you, and I'm sitting in my apartment right now. And so, I can tell you right now, I think it takes generations for the airline and travel
industry to recover from this. Because even when everybody
in 5 years is back to normal, I'm still going to debate, do I need to go to San
Francisco today for this meeting Or can I do this on zoom
or hangouts or BlueJeans? And the answer 6/10 times
is I can do it on BlueJeans. (Emma inaudible) - It's the changes that
are going to happen for all these industries you name so some are going to explode and some are gonna be
devastated for years to come. I guess it's, as sales people ourselves, what kind of advice would
you have for us approaching these marketeer guys, these CMOs, or CEOs, whether they're of advertising
agencies like yourselves or if they're direct for clients? What advice would you give us? - Let me go very narrow with this answer. Let's make pretend the
pandemic didn't even happen. I would tell everybody
here to have more pride in the product you're selling. I have the unfortunate thing where I get to do fireside
chats with companies that I think are going through challenges. And because I'm, this is being recorded, I want to be historically correct. So I'm a nice person, but I don't want to say
something I don't believe. So sometimes, when that
questions asked, I get into, "Hey, can I speak to the
engineers and the product people because your products
not very good right now and who cares if you're a good salesman, you're not gonna have
good lifetime value." I think I have the great fortune to have the reverse conversation right now with everybody on this call. I would tell you the number one thing that I would tell everybody here is to have way more pride
in what you're selling. I know, because I'm
very close to the world, that most brands, B2B included, have not accepted the incredible
power that LinkedIn is as a content and marketing engine. It is everyone's job on this call to actually break through
to agencies and to brands. And I think that most of
you will be too passive. I think you need to go in
with way more conviction, way more audacity because you actually do have one of the best tools in marketing at your fingertips and I know the world doesn't know it. So you need to cross all your
T's and I's with the examples. But most of all, you need
to go into those rooms on the borderline of audacious, because you're selling
one of the best products. And I know that's not the tone and tenor. Because what happens is, when something's not
accepted by the world, most sales people come in too passive. And my career has been, when I know I have the right thing, when "it's right" for the customer, then if I'm going to somebody in between the humans that use it and
like there's a decision maker, aka the CEO of Wieden+Kennedy,
or the CMO of Cadbury. If that person's in between that company doing it with LinkedIn, and the people that actually consume it, the actual people in
the field of LinkedIn. Well and I know LinkedIn is right, well, I'm being very aggressive. In my conviction, I'm very convicted. And I think clients and agencies need to hear that from a salesperson, because if they're skeptical
and you come in too passive, you're too far away now to move them. And so, as a salesperson, I've only sold things I believe in, because I don't know how to
be a salesperson when I don't, because it requires too much conviction to get somebody on board. Listen, this is a real
pleasure and joy for me. I hope everybody on this
call really realizes how strong the product is right now. The organic reach is remarkable and the targeting is remarkable. Because it's not replicated
anywhere else in the world, I cannot get to that many
business decision makers all with the same title
on their job description anywhere else in the world. That is the ultimate weapon. And the same way that it
took Facebook a half a decade to get its feet under them
to really go out there and get the dollars. I think that we're, I'm hoping for your sake. I mean to me in a weird way, to me, the longer people don't know that LinkedIn is this strong
is better for Vayner and me because I'm picking up more organic reach but for the context of what
I was invited to speak here, this is a rare opportunity
for me to flex on your behalf. This is a very great era
for LinkedIn marketing and I hope that you're
communicating that to your clients. - Glad to hear that, thank
you for that feedback. You were talking about organic reach. And you talk quite a bit
about underpriced attention. Can you talk a little bit of what you mean by underpriced attention and how can LinkedIn lean into that? - Oh, underpriced attention,
I've come to realize, is really my religion. I built my dad's business
from a $3.8 million business to a $65 million business in
7 years and I had no money. And the reason I was able
to do that was 3 things. 1. I realized that having a website was going to be important. So I built a website and
that alone was a big deal. This is 1996. Number 2. A year later, I realized email was a big deal. And this was the great gift of my career. Email, ended up being a
killer app for selling stuff and it was free. So my competitors were printing
catalogs with wine in it and shipping it. Which cost them a lot of
money to make the catalog and a lot of money in postage. I was gathering people's emails every time they came into the store. I literally Emma, would not let somebody
leave my dad's store without giving me their email. And I think you can tell my tenacity and I was a youngster,
I was real hungry then. So and through that, 2 things happened. I was faster and it cost me less. I was faster because when
Opus one or Chateau Lafitte or Dom Perignon's new vintage came out, I would email it the day it came in and I would get the sale. A month later, those individuals
would get the catalog from my competitors saying
the new Dom Perignon's here. So I was winning on speed, but also cost. And then finally, the tipping
point was Google AdWords. I was smart enough to realize
Google was a big platform, they launched the AdWords product. And literally on the day they
launched the AdWords product, I started buying wine terms. At first wine, Bordeaux, Mirlo, Champagne, later I had to pick,
you had to get smarter, because people started figuring it out. But I had about a year there where I was paying 5 cents
and then it became 10 cents for every wine term you can imagine and acquiring customers for nothing, sometimes 20, 30 cents to get customers, active customers, which is insane. So that became, about couple years ago, I realized what I've
been talking about was underpriced attention, meaning, the reason I'm so passionate
about LinkedIn now, but didn't say a word
about it 6 years ago, is the organic reach on a LinkedIn post for a business right now is meaningful. Because LinkedIn has
so much attention on it yet not as much content and ads on it yet. This is what always happens, you're able to get some
organic reach when you post. To me that is the holy grail of marketing when you're getting people to know about your business or you and it costs you less aka
either 0 on organic reach or why Facebook became so big, when you can spend $50
and get people to see it. One of my issues with
LinkedIn has been that there's a floor on the CPM on the cost. There's a $2 floor not a 5 cent floor. So I want to take advantage
of the long tail of targeting. So every time I see my
LinkedIn counterparts in the US working with
my media, it's funny, it's like an ongoing joke, because I think you can tell
by the tone I've had here, I'm such a fan of LinkedIn but
in one very specific place. And I don't understand why you do it, because it's a lack of inventory. So it allows you to create
a floor, I understand. But I still like to razz and every time I walked by
a meeting with my media team and the LinkedIn team, I'd pop my head and I'm like,
have you lowered the floor? And it's become almost
this like little mean joke. But that's how I see it, which is for certain
things I do not believe paying $2 per CPM is the right thing and that's why we are
very tactical on LinkedIn. In other arenas, paying $70
CPMs is the right thing, and we're only paying $13 because there's not that much spend
against that narrow thing. And that would be an example of me saying, "Wow, LinkedIn's remarkable. I'm only paying $13 CPMs here
to reach this executive class, that's an incredible
deal for this company." I'd have to pay, and then
when you amortize conversion, I might be paying $13 CPMs. But it might cost me
$1,000 to get a customer, whereas it will cost me
way more on Facebook, or Twitter, or YouTube
to get that same customer because LinkedIn has so
much data around people and their professional career. That's why LinkedIn is an
underpriced medium for me. It's media product, its ad product, has the capabilities of being better than anything else in the world
on very specific planning. And then on top of that, it also has organic reach that I don't see from anywhere besides TikTok right now and obviously very 2,
very different audiences. So underpriced attention
to me is things like the Superbowl in America cost $6 million. And I think it's unbelievably underpriced because 100 million people
will watch your commercial. Meanwhile, I think a regular commercial on the telly is overpriced, because there's assumptions
about GRPs and Nielsen ratings that I just know are not
true in common sense. Facebook organic used to be the
greatest thing in the world, it doesn't even exist
anymore. It's an ad product. Running the ads on Facebook as we do and we took tune of hundreds
of millions of dollars, there's a lot of ways
to make it underpriced. It's by doing contextual creative at scale and doing any different
media spends instead of one. There's ways to make it overpriced on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, where you just do one video and you just try to
reach everybody 18 to 55. So I spend my life being religious around, where's the nook and cranny that allows me to pay 5 cents, that is really worth 20 cents on business? In a minefield where
there's a lot of places you can spend 20 cents and
only get 5 cents value. That's what I mean by
underpriced attention. I can't hear you, Emma. - Oh, sorry. Can you hear me now, it got better? I can, yes it is. - No, I just said no,
that was great, thank you. So I mean, you obviously over the years, you've seen how all the different social platforms have evolved, you've definitely been
at the cutting edge. What do you believe is the
next big thing for social or what's coming down the track? What do you think is the next big thing? - You know what's funny? I don't predict. What I'm really great at Emma, is being the fastest mover
when it's become obvious. So, what I've had a great career on is when LinkedIn made that
switch I was there right away. I was one of those first 100 influencers of that first 100 influencers,
I produced the most content. And so, when musically, the predecessor to
TikTok had some momentum, even though it looked like it
was just 12 year old girls, I was in there making content. So, I don't know what the next TikTok, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, LinkedIn and TikTok
are a lot of fun for me because they're the 2 leaders of organic, which is always the thing I talk about, because a lot of people
follow me have no money. And so when you have no
money, you need organic. What's fun about TikTok and LinkedIn is TikTok is the newest of a line of Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, a true social network for
the youth that's growing. LinkedIn is a great one for
my thesis of not predicting, I would have never predicted LinkedIn as the next content place. LinkedIn is story of a
pivot or not a pivot, a very smart addition
to an ongoing platform. What that means is, one could argue that
YouTube tomorrow can say, wait a minute, why don't we
just add a stream of content that doesn't have to be video and they might become a more
meaningful "social network". You would probably more
logically argue that, that would be a distraction, and that's why they haven't done it. Right now there's 2 incredible
16 year olds in Scotland, who might be making the next great app. That's not something I could know about, I'm not Nostradamus, but I can promise you that
if that app gets traction, the steam traction, because you do see a lot
of apps have a good week, or a good month, or a good day. And there's an unbelievable
amount of names Peach and Vine even had a very
nice run until it was bought, Socialcam, Plurk, Friendster, My spot. You've got these things that have 1 week, even sometimes 3 year runs. I'm not a predictor, but I'm a practitioner of the moment of the apps that are winning. (Emma laughs) - Brilliant. You look at social as a whole and if we pivot in a
more tentative VaynerX, it's an absolute juggernaut. How did you navigate the landscape, a landscape a dominated by
global holding companies? - Patience, we're 10 years in, we're still a $200
million revenue holding, which is peanuts, peanuts compared to The Publicist and Omnicoms
and things of that nature. But we're emerging and we're emerging because of underpriced attention. What I mean by that is, in the same way that I
do underpriced attention, as a businessman, I look for opportunities that people don't see. And we became the best in the world, no question and I'm proud to say this and I know it sounds audacious, but it is very clear to me that there is no agency in the world that is better at understanding
how to make content and run media across the 15 apps that dominate the mobile phone. LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. And I think people are
starting to realize, wait a minute, that is
where brand is being built. That is not where you're just
doing lower funnel conversion, that's actually where
brand is being built. And brand is the game. And as the biggest
companies in the world say, Oh my God, I don't want
a TV first approach, I want a social first approach that makes me find what
I should put on TV. We be, We've got a loud
leader who's got a decade of being historically correct on the content that he's put out, which gives enormous amount of confidence to these decision makers. And not to mention the other
thing that I didn't think of, because you don't think about
being old when you're young. But in a decade or 2 here,
the majority of CMOs, that are going to be making the decisions, grew up on my content and my books. And so just from a brand standpoint and we're starting to feel it, there's been a couple of
moments here in the last year, I'm like, wait a minute this is cool. The person that actually
made that decision, they decided this was right in university when they were reading my book in class, like, we don't like,
that was a weird pitch, they were saying my words to me, we didn't even have to convince them. So as the decision maker evolves, what we have the benefit of is that what we've been focused
on actually became true, most of the marketing world dismissed and continues, to be frank,
dismisses social media or content on these
platforms as a nice to have, I view it as the singular source of oxygen for businesses going forward. You can't worry about anything, you have to start with being
incredible content producer, to the relevant cohorts and
segments in these channels. And then you can worry
about putting your logo on a football Jersey
for the Premier League, or running an ad on telly, or doing outdoor billboards
in the subway systems. And because you've already
figured out the right answer in these channels at very low cost. So we'll see but I've navigated
it by being more right about where the world was going. And it's not because I'm smarter, it's because the holding
companies are attached to where the money is right now. They're not going to, they're
going to sell commercials and because that's where the money is now, because they're publicly traded, and they have to make
revenue every quarter. I'm building something in perpetuity, which has allowed me to
play a different game, and we're starting to
feel the benefits of that. - I'm just gonna pivot slightly
just, I'm conscious of time, and there's just one kind of area I'd love to get your perspective on. Obviously we've talked
about the year we've had, I'd love to hear how you
have managed your physical and mental well being during the pandemic. We were only looking at 2 weeks of offices being closed down, and then we ended up going
into weeks and then months. So I'd love to get how
you manage your physical and mental well being and how can we kind of create a culture of getting people to
prioritize this for themselves? - For me, it's been about voices. It's recognizing early on that this was not gonna be a one day thing. And being self aware, this is
a self awareness game, right? To me, I know that I do my
best when I am optimistic, and when my perspective is proper. So I went into a tunnel vision of, "Hey, this is a bummer. But in the 1940s, people were running very
successful companies and then the Nazis invaded. So this stinks but in the history of time, there's been tougher times." And for me that always works, for me to lean into gratitude, and into worst case scenario
that works for my psyche. I also have had enough
success in my career, that's 6 years ago, I was able to afford a full
time trainer, just for me. And that is how I got my health
into a much better place. And so I knew that by
not him "babysitting me" that I was vulnerable. So I had a very quick call
with him early on and said, "Hey, we're gonna train virtually on zoom, you're going to watch me
go on the scale every day, so I don't lose my way." And so I kind of attacked
a strategy early on from a physical and mental place. And I think everybody
here needs to do the same. If that you binge eat when you're stressed and you don't wanna put
on 30 pounds during COVID. You need to first acknowledge that truth and then try to find a
system that works for you, whether that's asking your
spouse to hold you accountable, whether that's creating a Facebook group, whether that's putting out content and holding yourself accountable, whether that's throwing
out all the food that's, my mom and I are very similar, we'll eat literally
anything in front of us. So if it's a candy bar
or if it's green beans, it's all the same, we're just, we call ourselves lawn mowers. I have successfully taken
all bad food out of my house. My mom continues to not and thus she's had a
different experience in COVID than I have had. I think it's self awareness, and but then also not over
judging yourself, Emma. I think the reason people struggle is they beat themselves up. And I'd like everybody to
have a little more compassion and sympathy for themselves
during this time, aka, if you did gain 15 pounds
in this year, it's okay, when we get back to normal and you can go and do what works for you. In the next year you'll lose that and so enjoy the candy while you can. So I think it's a balance
of strategy and self love. - Really great advice there as well. I think it's been a tough year for people. So that's really great to hear. - Yeah, it's been a very challenging year. And I think a couple things. 1. why should we as humans live lives during all easy times when our grandparents, great grandparents, great, great grandparents didn't? So I think one, the first
thing everyone has to do is get over their own audacity and entitlement to like this great, it's not the way it actually works, you have both sides of the coin. I think once you get over that, if you don't beat yourself up for not, A lot of people beating themselves up because they didn't save money, even though they knew it
was the right thing to do, they didn't because they wanted
to live a certain lifestyle and now they are in a pickle. What many will do in that scenario is start to really be
upset with themselves. You should have a self reflection moment. But you can't go into a time machine and change the fact that you went on vacations you couldn't afford and buy clothes you couldn't afford. So you're not gonna be able to do that, what you can do is make
a commitment to yourself to going forward acting
in a different way. And I hope that people learn about themselves during this time. - We're nearly ready for Q&A. But I just wanted to ask
you just one question. Well, what is the question
that you're never asked in these discussions
that you wish you asked? - I think this is a
very interesting answer. I, when I sign up for these, I'm 100% focused on bringing
value to the audience. So I don't have any wishes on questions. The only question I wish people ask is, if they actually have a question, but they're scared to ask it because they think it would offend me or I wouldn't know the answer. Who knows what would be the rationale, I'm here to service in this setting. So, I don't have any real feelings towards a question I want to be asked. I just want to answer the question that everybody wants to be asked. (inaudible) (Emma laughs) - What we'll do is we're actually gonna bring Niall back on screen, because we thought it'd be
great to have him involved and he's been moderating the Q&A. So Niall, I'm gonna let you
take over the questions. Thank you. - Right, Emma. Hey, Gary, hey again. - Hello good friend... - Good to see you. - It's always great to see you (Niall laughs) - It's been a while. Listen, we got some awesome
questions through for you across a few different channels. So we should be able to get through them in about 13 minutes, So I'll just get started here. The first question comes in from someone on my team Aaron McGyver, and it's about sports cards (indistinct). It's around really about the, with the rise of online platforms, do you as a medium blockchain, do you see that the sports card industry will become predominantly a
virtual offering in the future? And if so, how will this
impact trading value of existing physical cards? - I don't think so. At least in let's say,
the next half century? Do I think something can lose
its value as a physical item, in all shapes and form? Of course I do. I just think it's too
early for like blockchain is an unbelievable technology, and I think will have
incredible ramifications on society over the next century. But do I think that
everything gets tokenized as quickly as a lot of
blockchain enthusiasts think? The answer is no. And I, and the reason I say that is, look how far along we are
in the last half decade. Blockchain has been very
prominent for the last half decade and we still don't have anywhere close to the amount of innovation on it that I think many of us thought could be the case 5 years ago. And so I think that the
tokenization of sports cards and art, and many other
things will happen. I think that there'll be some
moments of things popping kind of similar to the way that augmented reality technology
is incredibly strong right now in the world yet we've only had Pokemon
Go be a real phenomenon in the AR world. So do I think now that
something can come along and get tokenized and do really well? Yes, but for example, and this about me now this about me now, I don't talk about or do
things that I don't believe in. If I thought that trading
cards and football stickers, which would be more European,
would lose its value, I wouldn't be buying Mbappe
rookie cards for $5,000 a piece. Why? To watch it go down in value? So I don't think in the short term, there's gonna be that level of traction. I think people underestimate
human behavior, here's what I mean by that. online dating, in the mid 90s, I told all my friends that all of them would be doing online dating if they didn't get married
before online dating. And when I tell you
everybody made fun of me, for saying that, they made fun of me, because at the time in 1996, online dating was very creepy and was really when you
thought about online dating, the image you thought about was a 600 pound guy in his mom's basement. Well, now, as we all know, online dating is
foundational to all youth, everyone for that matter. I feel the same way about physical things. I think that people think everything's going to go
on blockchain and it will. But even though online dating
is massive across the world, there is a stunning amount
of people who do not do it, and still go to the pub, or get introduced through their sister. And I think now that's what will happen in 40 years with sports cards
and other tangible goods. I think there'll be a absolute world of tokenization and blockchain, but I don't think that
will take away from people. And I would argue that
it might even enhance the value of the most rare physical items, it's what we see now. We've already seen in our
young lives, everybody here. The growth and creation
of social networks, the slow but steady curve of
people spending time on it. And now the apex moments of it so much so, that kids predominantly in their teens are taking week or month breaks from it because they're the counterculture to it. Much like the rise of blockchain will actually create tokenization of items and then you'll see people
want to own the physical card because everything went digital. No different than hipsters in Brooklyn, wanting to own pagers and flip phones instead of the iPhone. The human race likes to swing pendulums, and over the next century will swing to the digitalization of physical goods, only to then be countered, with people going backwards
into physical goods, just like what's happening
with food habits. I hope everybody
understands what's happening with food in the world. People are starting to eat clean, the way that people ate 150 years ago. We then had the rise of modern food, and Business and Technology, create all the things we've known and now people are trying to go back to just ingredients and clean eating. So that's just how humans work. - Awesome, thanks, Gary. And next question for anyone,
I'm going through the Q&A in. (inaudible) liked first. You mentioned the key to success is not really caring too much
about what other people think. How do you get yourself into the mindset to be able to kick through any doors or people who have said
you can't do something? This is from Steve O'Brian. - Steve, I think for me, it was a journey of
losing a lot as a child, I was an immigrant, I
didn't speak the language, so it was hard for me to make friends when I first got to America. Then I was a bad student. So all my teachers said no you're failure, bad push against. I wasn't, after about
third or fourth grade, I it was clear to me that I
was not remarkable at sports. So, there wasn't that thing
that a lot of kids rely on. So I basically lived the life with a lot of adversity and a lot of no, my parents couldn't buy me things. "Mom, I want Nintendo." "No." Like, my life was about no. And so it was very easy
once I became an adult to be comfortable in no. For a lot of you, my children included, no was, you were in the business of yes. And in that became the vulnerability because no seemed scary, foreign. I think the biggest way for you or anybody else at a more advanced age of not being a child anymore, is getting into the practice
of losing and doing nos. Trying things that are hard to you, doing things that require no. People need to have a
relationship with no. And that is only something that either you are serendipitously growing up with, and or something that you
manufacture for yourself when you get older by putting yourself in uncomfortable positions, so that you become more
comfortable with rejection. It's ironic you asked
that question, literally, my Instagram post that I snuck in while I was doing the interview
with Emma, as I multitask, you might have saw me
looking down at some point, literally, this post that
I just posted is that people are too addicted
to positive reinforcement. You're smart, you're
pretty, that's awesome. Once you believe that, you become susceptible to
negative reinforcement. So now, the reason I'm
able to deal with pushback and no is actually when Emma introduces me and says all those nice things. I don't believe them. I
don't know how to say it. When I hear that I'm a 5 time
New York Times bestseller. That's funny to me, because I failed all my
English and writing classes. When I hear when Emma says something like, "You actually made a dent
in this global advertise, you know this style, you
were with us very early on." That's funny. We were like
a ragtag group of 50 people, that just we're sitting
in an office, right? You know this. So, for me, I don't get
high on my accomplishments, which allows me to not get low on when I'm dealing with negativity,
I just keep it very Zen. Very in the middle, like, I'm aware of what I've got
going on and where it's going. And I'm also aware that I'm 44 years old, which means I have a lot
of time to build on this. And it can end up being
in a very crazy place. Not financially on impact.
I'm well known at this point. And I'm just starting. So I know that kind of God
Willing with health and all that, my destiny at some level is
for some pretty big bridges. But that will never make me think that I'm better than somebody,
or I'm greater than. Which allows me then to then deal with the negativity that comes
along with that much notoriety and I like that, I like
that I don't get too high, and I don't get too low. - Awesome, great answer. All right. Next question. Shifting
gears ever so slightly. This is coming... - No, no, real quick because I
think you'll understand this. It also lends itself
because that's important. Because this is meta. It also
lends itself to humility. The reason I don't struggle
with other people's feedback is because I'm actually humble. Humble enough that when a former employee, like yourself, reaches out to me and says, "This is important to me", that even though I do not have time, I have negative time, I right this minute, can live the rest of my 50 years and not accomplish everything that is in front of me right now. Yet, I have the humility
and the empathy, compassion, and love to say yes to you,
because I'm hoping it helps you. Right? So if you can have
humility and generosity, it actually makes you less
susceptible to negativity. - That's awesome and I can attest to that. Anytime I've emailed you,
you're back within the hour. It's really impressive. It's incredible. - LinkedIn is huge. It's a
very important platform for me. But there is 0.0 chance I'm
doing this talk without you. And I think that being
in that place as a human, basically what I'm telling everybody is, no matter what level of success you have, please remember that you're insignificant. That may sound harsh, it's actually an incredibly
liberating, exciting experience. I'm doing a lot out here. And I know that if I die tomorrow, I'll have a couple of
hours on social networks where I get a lot of love, where people maybe will share
their favorite story of me or you'll write, Niall, on your LinkedIn, he was always there for
me and replied in an hour, or somebody will share
their favorite clip, but in truth, in 72 hours, everybody has to go back
to their normal lives and outside of a group of
25 to 50 people, that's it. And I think if you can
live in that humility, it allows you to deal with
the ability, it gets very hard if you believe what I just said, to get too down when
anonymous, anonymous, anonymous leaves a comment on your
LinkedIn posts that you suck. It's hard to like let
that carry too much weight when you understand what I just said. Let's dig in 2 more
before I get out of here. - All right, next question. - Niall add another one,
that would be great. - Next question is if
you could add one thing to LinkedIn streaming,
what would it be and why? And this is coming from Gavin Roberts. - It's a little tweak
on what you have now. Right now, live streaming
from a mobile device is too clunky with third party providers. I think LinkedIn is built
for more live experiences. But right now, the creator
side on the app side is not strong and if that can be fixed, I think you'll have even more engagement and more incredible content. LinkedIn is the place for
meaningful conversations for "Ted Talk" like
conversations in live format but it's it's just not
there yet as a product. - Awesome and my team's, my
chat is blowing up right now. From the team saying that
we are invaded for now, so and you had, you've
gotten their attention. Okay, last question. Before we wrap this up, let's say we'll leave
the good question the, what's the most impressive brands you've worked with and why? I would say currently, it's Procter and Gamble's
OLE in the US and ironically, SK-2 Procter and Gamble
in Singapore office. And, because they've given us the freedom to find the creative right
instead of being right. To 99% of marketing behavior today is a strategist and a
creative on an agency side, come up with a hypothesis,
buy to sell it into a client, and then the client spends all its money hoping that that messaging
was right, which is asinine. What we've been able
to do on OLE in the US and SK-2 in Asia, is producing enormous amounts of content across 50 different hypotheses, see what actually is
resonating with computers and then ladder up the creative. I believe that will be the creative format of the next century. And I believe that there
are very few people that have the humility
and the lack of fear to go with that model in corporate life. And I think it's the
courage of the leaders on those pieces of businesses that have created that opportunity. - Great and should we wrap it
up there. Emma take it away. - [Gary] Thanks Niall great to see you (Emma inaudible) - Thanks so much for your time today. It was really great. We really appreciate. We know how busy you are. And so we really appreciate
you taking the time to chat with us today. And hopefully, we'll get
to talk to you again soon. - Bye, everyone. I'm very available on
LinkedIn to say hello. So if you had a good time
just send me a message, I'd love to say hi to
some of you.Take care - [Emma And Niall] Bye, bye. - Hey, everybody on YouTube. First of all, thank you so much. So humbled for your time. I don't wear a watch but
time is the biggest asset. So thank you for watching that video. If you got some value out of that, there's plenty more where that came from. Feel free to check it out.
